US guilt in Ukraine crisis 'considerable, obvious' – Duma speaker

The US bears a considerable share of the blame for driving the situation in Ukraine towards the poor state it is in now, the speaker of the Russian State Duma says. The crisis threatens entire European continent.

Instead of promoting a
peaceful resolution for the crisis, Washington and its allies are
bent on imposing sanctions against Russia, “partially to
cover up their own guilt for the events,” Sergey Naryshkin
told a media conference in New Delhi.

“The guilt of the United States of America for those events
is considerable and obvious to the entire world,” he
stressed.

Naryshkin added that the sanctions policy is nothing but
“economic blackmail that has nothing to do with law.”

He said that the conflict in Ukraine “poses a risk to
international security, first of all to European security.”

Meanwhile Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the
travails of Ukraine are a direct result of Western
interventionism.

“For a quarter of century the key principles of the United
Nations had been systematically violated. The US and other
Western nations neglected the fundamental rules of international
law, widely used double standards and didn't hesitate to
intervene directly into other nations' sovereign affairs. The
impact of this policy is fully felt by the peoples of Yugoslavia,
Iraq, Libya and now Ukraine,” Lavrov said at a diplomatic
scholars’ meeting in Moscow.

Apart from sanctions Russia sees a more direct threat to the
fragile ceasefire in Ukraine. The UK announced it would send
military trainers to help Kiev build up its army. Officials in
Moscow see the move as potentially derailing the truce.

“Britain, which was not part of the Normandy format [Germany,
France, Russia and Ukraine, which negotiated the ceasefire], is
apparently prepared to derail the entire process. What kind of EU
unity over a political resolution in Ukraine are we talking about
here?” a source close to the Kremlin told journalists on
Friday.

“Statements from London that say there’s no military solution
to the Ukrainian crisis amid this move appear to be at least
hypocritical and a case of gambling with the security of all
Europe in worst-case scenario,” the source added.

The ceasefire brokered by the four nations in the Belarusian
capital, Minsk, appears to be holding up despite numerous
violations. The level of violence reported in eastern Ukraine has
considerably decreased, and both Kiev and the rebel forces are
pulling back heavy weapons from the front line under OSCE
observation.

However little trust remains between the combatants, and both
warn that they would turn their weapons back and resume
hostilities if attacked. On Friday, Kiev reported that three
of its troops had been killed over the previous 24 hours, after
two previous days with no combat losses.

On Friday, Russia sent its 16-truck humanitarian aid convoy to
the war-torn regions in eastern Ukraine. Rebel military engineers
are using the calm period to search for unexploded shells and
other remnants of the battles and dispose of them, RT
correspondent Marad Gazdiev reports from the scene.